In running Kenosha store, Franz Bidinger showed his love of music

Milwaukee Catholic Home

Franz Bidinger and his daughter, Julie Weary, smile for the camera in 2006.

When his teenage daughter was hanging out in her room, Franz Bidinger knew exactly how to get her to come out.

He'd crank up his reproducing piano — a kind of player piano, but with richer tones and pedal work — and he'd put on Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue."

"That would sort of lure me out of my room, when he put that on. It just touches you," said his daughter, Julie Weary. "It happened to touch both of us."

Bidinger, lover of Gershwin and Beethoven piano concertos, proprietor — like his father before him — of Bidinger Music House in Kenosha, died Jan. 5 of natural causes. He was 99.

Bidinger took over the family music store in 1946 after serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He'd graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Harvard Business School.

Bidinger had grown up working in the store founded by his father, loved music and knew just enough of a Chopin sonata to demonstrate pianos in the shop. He was partial to classical piano, especially those Beethoven concertos.

The shop on 56th St. was housed in the same building as radio station WLIP-AM (1050). Bidinger Music House specialized in musical instruments — drums, violins, pianos — as well as televisions (it had a Magnavox franchise). It carried records, too, with listening booths where customers could hear the music before they bought it.

Weary remembers her father setting her up in a booth to listen to Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf."

Her mother would send her to the shop with her father on Saturday mornings, where he put her in charge of the adding machine.

In 1961, the family moved to Milwaukee and Bidinger ran the store until the mid-1970s, when he sold it.

"As time went on he couldn't keep up with the bigger stores," said Weary, of Vero Beach, Fla.

Still, he went back.

"He just loved the store so much," she said. "He sold it and then he would go back and work at it."

Weary saw her father's love of music growing up and noted that anyone who knew him described him as a gentleman. She called him a gentle man who liked to quote Shakespeare's "Winter" poem ("Tu-whit, tu-who: a merry note...").

As he grew older, his daughter encountered what she calls an unexpected lesson in bravery from Bidinger. It was how he handled his mounting infirmities, moving first from the Fox Point home he'd shared with his late wife, Virginia, to the Milwaukee Catholic Home. His care needs meant moves from independent living to assisted living.

"Little by little, his life shrunk," his daughter said. "And he took it all with grace and good humor."

He continued to quote Shakespeare and lines from favorite songs. He liked the line, "The Mediterranean was getting a little too blue..." from "Mediterranean Folly" by Dwight Fiske.

"He never complained. He was really the bravest man I've known, and I never thought of him as being brave growing up," she said.

"But he showed what he was made of these last few years. He was brave. And a great example of how to live the end of your life."

Besides his daughter, Julie, he is survived by a son, Franz L. Bidinger Jr., and three grandsons.

Franz L. Bidinger

Services will be held Tuesday in St. Anne's Chapel at the Milwaukee Catholic Home, 2462 N. Prospect Ave., with visitation at 10 a.m. and Mass at 10:30 a.m. Memorials to the Milwaukee Catholic Home are appreciated.

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